This blender works perfectly. The speed is great. Very easy to clean. This blender does take up a little bit of your counter space though so make sure you have enough room for it or a nice storage area for it. This blends fruit and ice very nicely and even. Makes for a nice home warming or wedding gift.I have a blender almost exactly like this one. Except it was cheaper and it's fancier. That's an interesting one. Considering my other blender is also 2200w and the whole thing is shaped exactly the same, I'd say they were probably made in the same factory. Owning that other blender has taught me some things that help with this blender.1. The other blender has a hot soups mode. When you switch it to that, it will heat up whatever is in there. This blender does the same thing if you turn it up really high. So, if you are making something cold or just something that you don't want to get hot, don't use the highest settings. Lower speed is absolutely fine for things like smoothies.2. High speed creates an air pocket and nothing will blend. Once again, don't use high speed for most things. Making extremely blended soup? High speed is great. Doing basically anything else? Don't turn it all the way up.3. High speed is good for cleaning it. You can clean about 75% of it by putting some water and soap in there and blasting away with high speed. The cap and the very top won't clean very well, but the rest will.4. You rarely want it to just sit at one speed. Every setting I use on my blender uses different speeds to make things. This is so it doesn't form an air pocket and so it blends properly. So, what you want to do it kind of move the speed around, avoid ultra high speed except in short bursts.5. This thing is stupid powerful and eats ice. I just made a smoothie in this blender and it turned frozen blueberries into something near a liquid basically instantly. My other blender is the same.One other thing to note, pulse seems to pulse it at top speed. It's pretty useless. If you want to pulse it, just use the speed dial and the on off switch.I made a smoothie in this, and I just mimicked what my other blender does. I turned it on, slowly turned it up to medium, left it there for a few seconds, turned it back to low, and then back up to medium and then shut it off. Bam, smoothie. It had zero problems with frozen blueberries. To clean it, I sprayed off the lid in my sink, and filled this with hot water, while using my faucet to clean off the top of the cup. I put a little Dawn in there, and then turned it on low, then dialed it up to high. I left it there for a bit, and then turned it back down to low and then off. Dumped out the purple water (blueberry smoothie) and hosed it out in my sink. It's clean.If you take nothing out of this aside from this, just remember that high speed creates heat. You don't want a hot smoothie.High powered, large capacity blender that is perfect for smoothies. The controls are simple and straight forward: on/ off, pulse, and a high/ low dial. It blends fruits and vegetables fast, requires minimal liquid and leaves no clumps. It does NOT work for turning nuts/ seeds into flour, however. The blades get a bit too hot. Ideal for smoothies, sauces, etc!I was excited to recieve this blender but upon opening and putting together I was'nt too happy on how the blender went on the base, it doesnt feel really secure like it does'nt click in place I would hold the top down just in case.This blender definitely beats out my old one. My old one was really loud so I was hoping when ordering this it would be quieter and although it is, it's not as quiet as I was hoping it would be; however, that's not a dealbreaker for me. I make a lot of smoothies with ice and this blender does an amazing job at crushing/blending with ice which was the main problem I was having with my last one.I was pleasantly surprised to see how powerful this blender was and I also really like the attachments that came with it! It is a fairly large blender but not so much so you couldn't easily store it away in a cabinet or off the countertop. It's not overly heavy either, it's about the weight you would expect for a blender this size. Overall it does an amazing job and it's most definitely an upgrade compared to what I had before so I am a very happy customer. Highly recommend this blender!